Elizabeth lay still, her face half-hidden in the dim glow of the dying firelight. Her gaze was sharp, keen, waiting for an answer.
He considered his words. “I… do not take unnecessary risks.”
Elizabeth scoffed, rolling onto her side, tucking her hands under his overcoat. “Well,” she muttered. “You are doing a poor job of that.”
Darcy sighed, closing his eyes again.
Tomorrow.
He would deal with her tomorrow.
Chapter Six
Southwark, May 15, 1812
Elizabethawokecold,miserable,and vaguely furious at existence.
For a single, blissful moment, she did not remember where she was. The scent of her familiar rosewater perfume still clung faintly to the fabric twisted around her, and there was warmth against her cheek from where she had pressed into the folds.
A sharp ache throbbed at the base of her skull, her back protesting violently as she tried to shift her position. The mattress beneath her had been stuffed with something far less forgiving than feathers—straw and wood shavings, perhaps, or scraps of fabric stolen from a tailor’s floor. She had been uncomfortably cold all night, and yet she was overheated now, tangled in the heavy folds of some wool thing that was both too heavy to be a proper blanket and too misshapen to cover her evenly.
That would be why the draft hit her when she tried to roll over.
She inhaled sharply, eyes blinking open to a ceiling that was not familiar, not elegant, and not remotely respectable. The scent of moldering wood, unwashed linens, and something musty and unpleasant filled her nose. The muffled sounds of a raucous argument from downstairs drifted up, accompanied by the occasional thud of something hitting a table—or a person.
It all came back in a rush.
She sat up too quickly and winced. Her back protested.
The bed—if one could call it that—would have made a passable torture device, the thin mattress barely disguising the hard slats beneath. Her legs were tangled in something thick and heavy, and she realized with a fresh wave of horror that it was that strange man’s coat.
Or at least, ithadbeen his coat.
Now, it was something far worse—a casualty of her restless sleep, wrinkled, twisted, hopelessly rumpled and probably soiled from whatever was on that mattress. And worst of all, as she shifted beneath the overcoat, she felt the grainy stickiness on her palm where it had brushed against the bedsheets.
She inhaled sharply and shoved the overcoat to the floor. Darcy could hardly complain—it was not as if that would make it any more soiled than it already was.
Pushing the coat away only served to remind her of how freezing the room was, and she shuddered. She sat up with a groan, rubbing her hands up and down her arms, attempting to restore some feeling to her chilled body.
What she would not give for a proper fire, for a warm bath, for a breakfast served on a tray rather than whatever stale bread and weak ale the downstairs innkeeper would consider a meal.
But it was not the cold, nor the discomfort, that truly set her stomach twisting. It was the fact that she was still here.
Still trapped in this awful, suffocating little room.
Still trapped withhim.
The chair across the room groaned under the full weight of Mr. Darcy, who was slumped back at an uncomfortable angle, his arms crossed, his head tipped back against the wall. The sight of him—a tall, immovable force, both brooding and disheveled—reminded her of the fact that she could not go home. That her father had no idea where she was.
Her father!Surely by now someone had come for her. Her father would have sent men searching. The duchess would have been appalled, no doubt asking the duke to storm the palace for answers. The Queen—surely—had seen fit to clarify whatever absurd mistake had landed Elizabeth in this predicament.
Yes, surely someone had sorted this out.
All she needed was to compose herself, smooth her hair, and—
Her gaze caught the cracked mirror above the rickety dresser, and her mouth fell open in horror.
Elizabeth scrambled to her feet, crossing the room in two strides, eyes widening in abject horror at her reflection.
